A Wise Decision
by rynling
Summary: After the events in Oracle of Seasons and Ages, Zelda asks Link not to kill Ganon, who remains in the form of a monstrous boar that she has restrained with a magic silver bridle. As she talks to Ganon, he slowly regains his humanity. Zelda finds she must make a choice about the fate of the man who may be her worst enemy – or her closest ally. Platonic Zelgan in a dystopian Hyrule.
1. The Demon Boar

A thick thread of saliva dropped from the boar's mouth and pooled into a gluey mass on the red clay of the ground next to the campfire. Zelda watched it fall before looking away in disgust. There was no doubt in her mind that the creature was only pretending to sleep.

The boar grunted, jerking Zelda's attention back to its grisly face. It squinted at her with gummy eyes, its irises an unnatural shade of gold. Zelda reached forward to poke the embers of the fire with a stick, and the boar flinched. She tightened her fist around the chain connected to its silver bridle, which glittered in the light of the flames.

Zelda was exhausted, and she wondered why she had insisted on allowing the monster to live. Its resurrection had been fueled by the misery of the people in Holodrum and Labrynna, and she herself had almost been sacrificed in the process. Something so evil should not be allowed to exist, but it served as the host of the Triforce of Power. It was her duty to return with it to Hyrule.

As long as the magical silver bridle did what it was supposed to do, the creature presented no danger to her, but Zelda still couldn't bring herself to relax. It was shaped like a boar, but it was gigantic, almost as large as a destrier. Its black fur was tinged with a deep midnight blue, and matted auburn hair sprouted in tufts around its misshapen head and along the ridge of its spine. From between its blubbery lips jutted tusks larger and sharper than those of any animal she had ever encountered. If the monstrosity managed to break free of her control, she had only her sword to defend herself, and she understood that her death would be swift and painful.

The boar's pelt was crossed with the scarred lines left behind by Link's sword. He could have killed it and put it out of its misery, but she'd begged him to stop. She hoped the Triforce of Power could save Hyrule, and save her. Now that she and Link had parted ways, there was no undoing what she had done. She was alone with a demon, and there was nothing more than a small campfire holding off the darkness surrounding them.

"It's not easy being a princess, you know."

In the absence of a travel partner to keep her company, Zelda had begun to talk to the boar. She knew that it didn't understand her. So much the better.

"Everyone acts like it's a privilege, and that I should be grateful, but – " the boar had stopped to sniff at something on the edge of the path, and Zelda paused to jerk it forward. "Come on, you brute. There'll be plenty of food for you when we get where we're going." The demon grunted and shook its head, and Zelda continued walking.

"I should be grateful," she continued after a few yards, "but it's not like I have a choice about anything in my life. This is the first thing I've done on my own in years, and look where it got me. A pair of nasty old witches want to sacrifice my soul to a giant pig monster, just because I'm a princess, curse the goddesses. I'm special because I'm 'pure of heart,' whatever that means."

Zelda glanced behind her at the boar, but it was looking off into the forest underbrush as it trotted along.

"Is it like extra-virgin olive oil?" she asked herself, thinking of the delicacy imported from the seaside kingdom of Labrynna. "Am I 'extra-virgin' because I'm a princess? Great Din, it's not like I even have a choice in that matter. I must have had at least a dozen suitors in the past three years, and none of them had anything substantial to offer Hyrule. It would be one thing if they were at least attractive, but..."

Zelda sighed. "I just feel so trapped sometimes," she said, twining the silver chain around her knuckles.

"Let... me... go."

A shiver ran down Zelda's spine as a guttural voice emerged from the creature behind her. She stopped dead in her tracks and slowly turned to face the boar, which was staring straight at her.

"Did you just...?" Zelda couldn't quite bring herself to voice the question. The idea that the boar had talked to her was preposterous.

And yet it met her eyes as it opened its mouth.

"I... am... trapped... too. Let... me... go." Each utterance was garbled but distinct.

Zelda shook her head. "Fine, so you can talk," she addressed the demon, "but there's no chance I'm setting you free." She felt a brief pang of guilt and began to reconsider. "Unless you can explain why I should," she offered.

The boar made a gurgling sound and began sniffing at the dirt.

"All right then." Zelda shrugged. They hadn't covered near enough ground, and she couldn't afford to waste more time before nightfall. She tugged at the boar's chain as she turned toward the path in front of her.

"This would be so much easier if I had a horse," Zelda grumbled as she attempted to kick the mud off her boots. She'd have to clean them later, and she wasn't looking forward to stripping down to her stocking feet in front of the demon. It hadn't made the slightest move out of line since she had begun leading it forward along the long road to Hyrule, but she hesitated to render herself vulnerable in its presence. Relieving herself was torture, and sleep was out of the question. She had walked through the night, and she was nearing the end of her endurance.

"And I'd prefer not to have to go in such a roundabout way," she continued, taking on an argumentative tone. "But it's not as if I can parade you through town, either. Some hero would get it into his mind to slay you, and then where would we be? You'd get loose, and then there really would be trouble."

"...Kill...him..." the boar mumbled behind her.

"Yes, of course you'd kill him," Zelda agreed, "which is only natural. You'd be acting in self-defense, and it's not as if he'd show mercy to you. That's not what I'm worried about, though."

"The... chain," the boar grunted.

"Right," Zelda nodded. "The problem is the chain. If someone else gained control over you, they could use you against me. Or..."

Zelda paused to rub sweat out of her eyes.

"Oth... oth... thers," the boar slobbered, its thick tongue unable to form the word.

"That's the idea," Zelda replied. As horrible as it was to imagine the prospect of facing down the incarnation of a mythical demon, the idea of someone else using it as a weapon was even more frightening.

She had been conversing with the boar for hours. At first it said nothing intelligible, and Zelda could only understand one word out of every five. As the sun set on her second day on the road with the creature, however, its speech began to make more sense. Zelda suspected she would fall asleep if she stopped to rest, and so she continued walking, talking with the boar to keep herself awake.

"So... let.. me... go," it grumbled.

"Nope," Zelda said, shaking her head. "It's nice that you can talk, but there's a reason I'm keeping you on a leash. If you really are Ganon, then you're my enemy. You destroyed Hyrule in the past, and you'll do it again if you're not stopped. You almost destroyed Holodrum, and Labrynna was on the verge of collapse when I got there."

"Not... me..."

"I don't buy that for a second. One of the poems I had to memorize as a girl called Ganon 'the prince of deceit, a liar and a thief.' And I could feel the evil energy in the air as soon as I crossed the border into Labrynna. Magic may have faded away in Hyrule, but..."

Zelda cut herself off. She had been taught not to talk about magic, and the force of habit was strong, even so far away from the castle. Still, she could feel waves of powerful magic emanating from the creature, its energy transmitted to her through the conduit of the silver bridle. She suspected that this power had been keeping her going as she walked without rest through dangerous territory, the fierce aura of the boar ensuring that lesser monsters remained at bay.

And then there was the strange stone that had been left on the battlefield in a pool of the boar's blood. Although no one else noticed it, it glowed like a star in Zelda's eyes, and now it burned like a coal in an inner pocket of her cloak.

She withdrew the stone on a sudden whim. It made the nerves in her fingers tingle uncomfortably. "If you weren't a demon, what would you be doing with something like this?" she asked, turning to show it to the boar.

Its eyes flashed, and it grew violently agitated, restrained only by the magic of the bridle.

"GIVE THAT TO ME," it roared, no longer stumbling over its words.

Zelda stared. The boar's body shook, and its hooves kicked at the ground. Its eyes were desperate. Demon or not, the creature was clearly in the grip of some terrible emotion, and Zelda found that she could not ignore its distress.

"What do you want me to do?" she whispered.

"On my forehead," it said, its voice choking but its words as clear as glass. "Against the scar."

Zelda had not spent any length of time studying the boar's face, but now that she looked closely she noticed a cross-shaped indentation at the top of its snout. She tried to turn away from the intensity of its gaze, but she felt compelled to step forward, the magical stone still in her hand. There was an almost magnetic force drawing her to the demon, and she could not deny it. It was as if she had stepped out of herself, out of her role as the firstborn and only princess of Hyrule, and become something much larger, something closer to the pulsing heart of the world.

"So be it," she declared. Zelda touched the glowing amber stone against the pale scarred flesh between the boar's eyes. Her head was suddenly filled with a blinding white light, and then everything went black.


	2. The Demon Thief

When she woke up, a demonic face was looming over her. Zelda shrieked and scooted backward, fumbling at her belt.

"Looking for this?"

The leering scowl belonged to a young man sitting cross-legged on the ground next to her. He was holding her sword. When she saw the silver collar around his neck and the cracked topaz set into a tarnished diadem on his forehead, everything snapped into place.

"You're the Demon King," she said, wanting desperately to search for the chain attached to his collar but unwilling to look away from him.

He rolled his eyes. "Hardly. My name is Ganondorf."

It couldn't be. The name was infamous in Hyrule. "Ganondorf Dragmire?" she whispered.

"One and the same," he replied, setting her sword down. "I thought you'd never wake up. You must be thirsty." He reached around behind him, retrieved her water skin, and tossed it to her. She caught it and wondered whether what this man – if indeed he were a man – had given her was safe to drink.

He seemed to read her thoughts. "Don't worry, it's not poisoned," he said, rolling his eyes again. "What good would that do me? I can't touch you, and I can't move away from you either," he explained, tapping his collar with his index finger.

Although it was entirely possible that he was lying, Zelda was extremely thirsty, and she decided to take her chances. She unscrewed the lid of the cap sewn into the water skin and drank until it was empty.

As she lowered the skin, she saw that the creature calling himself Ganondorf had turned his back to her. He gestured toward the underbrush alongside the road, and Zelda understood that he was trying to give her privacy.

When she returned, she found him standing and waiting with his arms crossed. He had left her sword on a boulder beside the road. As she picked it up, she measured the blade against her opponent. Running her eyes over him, she registered how tall he was, and how wide his shoulders stretched, and how massive his hands were. The armor he wore under his dark robe consisted of nothing more than cured leather, but it bore clear signs of having weathered its share of battles. Although he was terrifying as a boar, as a man he was even more unsettling. Zelda arrived at a quick deduction that her rapier wouldn't be of much use against him. He had probably come to the same conclusion himself, yet it was curious that he had returned her weapon.

"Took you long enough," he muttered.

Despite the danger he posed, the strongest emotion she felt at the moment was annoyance. If he were going to kill her, she'd prefer that he put his intentions out in the open.

"What do you mean, 'it took me long enough'? Are you in a rush to get somewhere?"

"As a matter of fact, I am. You just drank the last of the water, and I'm starving," he replied, cracking his knuckles as he stretched. "You're obviously an inexperienced traveler, and you didn't pack anything useful. It's a wonder you even made it this far."

Zelda's response rose to her lips unbidden. "You. Are. RUDE," she spat.

To her astonishment, the giant laughed, his broad shoulders shaking.

"Those are strong words from a woman who spent the past two days complaining about how hard it is to be a princess," he taunted her.

Suddenly she was furious at him, and even more furious at herself for becoming entangled in this situation in the first place. "What would you know about being a princess," she hissed.

"More than you might think. Before I woke to find myself in a boar's body, I was a prince, born and bred and surrounded by young women of quality. I happen to remember you when you were little, and trust me, you weren't much of a princess then, either."

"That can't possibly be true. I never so much as saw you before in my life. I think I would have remembered."

"It must have been another of your reincarnations, then. What does it matter?" He waved his hand, dismissing the argument.

Zelda couldn't believe his audacity. Even though he claimed to be a villain from the pages of history, he didn't seem to be that much older than she was, and she resented the way he treated her like a child. The last thing she wanted was to get into a verbal sparring match with a strange man who had only recently been a boar, but she wasn't about to let the matter drop. "I'll have you know that I am not a reincarnation of anyone," she asserted. "That's just a myth, that all the Zeldas are reincarnations of each other. No one takes it seriously! You foolish creature, to think you know anything about Hyrule."

"Fine, fine." He shrugged. "What do I know? Are we going to keep arguing over metaphysics in the middle of the road, or are you going to take me back to your precious Hyrule?"

"If you're really Ganondorf Dragmire, then you must be a powerful wizard. Why can't you just transport us?" Zelda snapped.

"You foolish creature, to think you know anything about magic," he sneered back at her.

"Why would I know anything about magic? And besides, I'm not the one who disrupted the time and seasons of Labrynna and Holodrum, and I'm not the one who tried to destroy Hyrule. If that's how magic works, then I don't want anything to do with it."

"I don't think you have any idea how this enchantment you've got me under works, Princess, so let me enlighten you," he said, bending forward and lowering his voice. "You could do anything – literally _anything_ – to me while this collar is around my neck. Maybe you feel like the ends justify the means, but let me ask you, do you really think an ensorcelled object like this is a good idea? Do you for one second think every prisoner bound by this magic was as terrible and dangerous as you seem to believe I am?"

"That's not my concern," Zelda responded. What may have happened in her country's history had no bearing on her current situation, which involved no more and no less than standing on a deserted road with a monster that had conspired to take on the form of one of Hyrule's most notorious criminals. She had no intention of debating ethics with him.

Zelda picked up her pack, turned her back on the demon, and continued down the road, praying that she was headed in the right direction. After a few moments, she could hear the heavy fall of his footsteps as he began to follow along behind her.

"And anyway, I didn't try to destroy Hyrule," he grumbled in an undertone, just loud enough so that she could hear him.

"What in the name of Farore were you trying to do, then?" If the demon had decided that he was Ganondorf Dragmire, then she would have to humor him.

"I was just..." He trailed off, and they walked for several paces in silence, the sounds of the forest breaking into the conversation. Birds sang, leaves rustled, and the dirt and gravel of the unpaved road crunched under their feet.

"I was an ambassador," he finally said. "That's not something I chose, but I assume even an irresponsible princess like you understands that we don't always get to pick our roles."

"I'm not irresponsible." This wasn't the first time such an accusation had been directed at Zelda, and it grated on her nerves.

"Of course you're not. You just absconded from your kingdom to go on a wild boar chase, there's nothing irresponsible about that."

Zelda didn't dignify his sarcasm with a response. She didn't need to explain herself to him.

They walked in silence. After what must have been more than an hour, Ganondorf resumed his explanation as if he had never been interrupted.

"I was happy in the desert," he said. "Everything I knew and everything I wanted was there, and I didn't care about Hyrule. It was too far away, and it had nothing to do with me. Before long I found out that we were a vassal state, and that I would never be the king of anything, just an eternal prince in thrall to your throne. Your idiot king taunted and disrespected the emissaries we sent him, and so the Gerudo elders decided that they would send me. I had no experience and scarcely any qualifications, but I was male, and that was all that mattered, apparently. I had just turned eighteen, and so I was stuck in a ridiculous outfit and sent on my way. I couldn't very well say no, so off I went."

Despite herself, Zelda was intrigued by his story. Perhaps it was because she had been walking so long without rest, but she found herself sympathizing with him. She had long since lost count of how many times she herself had been forced into a dress and sent out to treat with some visiting dignitary. She was too young to have any real power, and the people she was expected to entertain knew it. The only bargaining tool she could use with any degree of efficacy was her feminine charm, and she didn't always feel up to the task of being charming. If it weren't for her bodyguard Impa, who had consented to teach her fencing and archery, she wouldn't have acquired any real skills at all.

"If it weren't for my cousin Nabooru, I wouldn't have made any headway at all," Ganondorf continued, mirroring her thoughts with an eerie precision. "She was the ambassador before I was, and she taught me your customs, as well as your language."

"You can't have been a very good student," Zelda interjected, surprised that she would say such a thing but deciding to continue regardless. "You speak with an atrocious accent."

"On the contrary. My accent was perfected in the court of your ancestors. You have the accent, Princess."

"That may be." Zelda shrugged and let the matter drop. She was too tired to argue with him. Now that she was no longer drawing from the energy that the Triforce of Power had sent radiating outward from the body of the boar, her feet and knees ached.

There was a sharp intake of breath behind her, and she turned just in time to see Ganondorf tumble to the ground. It was like watching a landslide.

Uttering a string of guttural words that Zelda could only assume were curses, he sat up and began pounding on his calves with his fists. He probably had leg cramps, and he looked like he was in pain. Zelda, who was more used to riding than walking, had suffered through her own share of cramps at the beginning of this trek.

She knelt beside Ganondorf and touched the tips of her fingers to his knee. He stared at her in shock, but she ignored him as she hummed the melody to a healing spell. Her grandmother had taught it to her during one of the long afternoons they spent together in the queen's solar, and she had never forgotten it. Magic could be a force of terrible destruction, and it had been forbidden for the greater good of the kingdom, but what would one small spell matter?

When Zelda finished the song, Ganondorf stretched his legs out in front of him. "You didn't have to do that," he said peevishly.

"No, of course not," Zelda agreed as she stood up and brushed the dirt from her trousers. "But I couldn't just stand there and watch while..."

"While I suffered? How noble of you." He shook his head and climbed to his feet. "You want to take off this collar while you're at it?"

"What I want is to sit down," Zelda grumbled, "but I can't very well do that while I have a demon tailing along behind me." A part of her was amazed at how querulous she was being, but the sense of danger that had been her constant companion while she traveled with the boar had dissipated, and now she was just tired.

"Am I a demon, or am I a criminal? Make up your mind."

"It doesn't matter, does it? All I want is the Triforce. You – whatever you are – are incidental."

"It's funny you should say that, because I was imprisoned on nothing more than an accusation that I exhibited the same attitude toward you... or your ancestor, vicious little brat that she was."

"If you're going to claim to be Ganondorf Dragmire, you need to get your story straight." Zelda sighed. Her feet were killing her, and she could feel a blister forming on her left heel. "You were accused of high treason against the royal family when you shattered the Triforce. Clearly that wasn't a false accusation, because here we are, you with your Triforce and I with mine."

"You Hylians never listen. I'm trying to explain, that's not what happened. I – "

Zelda missed the rest of his words as the toe of her boot caught on a tree root half buried in the road. Her ankle twisted as she stumbled. Ganondorf dashed forward and reached out to steady her, but he grimaced in pain the second his fingers brushed her shoulder. He cursed as he yanked his hand back.

Zelda steadied herself and tested her ankle, which stung when she put her weight on it. It seemed she would have to use her healing spell again.

"You really can't touch me, can you," she said, more to herself than to Ganondorf.

"Like I told you," he answered, rubbing the silver collar in annoyance. He seemed just as exhausted as she was. If he was tired, then he was probably human, and the fact that he had tried to break her fall on reflex meant he was probably sane enough to be reasoned with.

"You know what? I've had enough of walking," Zelda announced. "The sun is setting, and we're going to make camp right here and right now."

"Whatever you say, Princess." Ganondorf shrugged. "I'd offer to go find firewood or water for us, but obviously I can't, so I guess I'll just follow along behind you and perform whatever tasks you command. I hope you know what you're doing."

Zelda sighed again in exasperation. It was going to be a long night.


	3. The Demon Prince

Zelda sat on a log facing the remains of the campfire. In the predawn twilight, everything in the forest was suffused with shades of murky blue. She had woken early, and she couldn't get back to sleep.

Ganondorf lay wrapped in his robe on the ground beside her. His breathing was deep and regular. Zelda had to admit that he made himself useful, but his means of doing so troubled her. After she had announced that their journey was done for the day, he used his magic to guide them straight to a stream that ran several hundred yards away from the road. As she refilled the water skin, he intoned a cadence of harsh words. The surface of the stream exploded, sending fish flying into the air. When she stared at him in horror, he had simply shrugged and gestured toward a large trout flopping on the ground beside her, saying, "We need to eat."

Zelda had been born with magic in her blood; it flowed through her veins and was eager to find expression. She had discovered her talent when she was very young, when she was visited by vivid dreams in which she could do amazing things. She could make herself invisible, or jump from one room of the castle to another in an instant, or conjure light from the tips of her fingers. Upon waking she would attempt to bring the magic to life. The words and melodies she needed to transfer her visions from her dreams into reality would rise from her heart to her lips, and when she sang them marvelous things happened. She could jump high into the air and float leisurely down, and she could produce radiant balls of silver light in her palms.

She frightened her maids, and rumors found their way to Impa, who chastised her harshly. The allure of magic proved too strong, however, and Impa's severe words were not enough to stop her experiments. Although Impa must have done everything in her considerable power to conceal these events from notice, the king eventually caught wind of the stir his daughter's uncanny behavior was creating among the castle staff. He was a kind man and not prone to displays of strong emotion, but he poured his rage down onto Zelda's head, blind to her tears and deaf to her excuses. He forbid her all manner of freedoms and decreed that she be kept under close watch. It was only later and in private that her mother came to her and gently explained that her father was not angry, but afraid. Magic had a terrible history in Hyrule, and its use was expressly forbidden.

After Zelda made camp the previous evening, Ganondorf had watched her unsuccessfully attempt to spark a fire with her flint before using his magic to cause flames to roar to life inches from her face. The words he intoned stuck in Zelda's mind, resonating as clearly as if she had committed them to memory long ago.

She now stared at the remains of the fire and pulled her cloak around her, wishing she could kindle flames with mere words. But who was to say that she could not? After all, she had never tried.

Zelda fixed her attention on the charred logs of the previous evening's campfire. She pictured flames dancing over and through them, flickering in and out of the darkness. As she recalled the heat on her skin and the smell of burning wood, she recited the incantation that Ganondorf had spoken the night before, drawing the magic from her heart to her tongue.

Nothing happened.

Zelda stared blankly at the blackened wood, wondering what she had done wrong. She filled her mind with fire, focusing her will on the quintessence of the element, and tried again.

Still, nothing happened.

She repeated the incantation, carefully intoning each syllable, but the ashes remained cold, not a single spark of light emerging from the pile of wood. Zelda exhaled slowly. She was annoyed by her failure to accomplish something that Ganondorf had managed without effort.

Fine, then. She could admit to herself that she didn't how Ganondorf's magic worked. If she couldn't do things his way, then she would try working her own magic. She rubbed the tips of her fingers together and considered singing the spell, wondering what melody she should use. She took a deep breath and prepared to try again.

Suddenly the words of the incantation rang out from beside her, and bright flames instantly rose from the campfire. Zelda twisted her head sharply to see Ganondorf sitting up, his cloak once again thrown around his shoulders. She hadn't heard him move at all, and she resented the fact that he had been watching her without her knowledge.

Ganondorf sneered in response to her sour look. "It was embarrassing to watch you," he taunted.

He was right, it was embarrassing. Zelda had always prided herself on her competence, but this journey had proven to her just how limited her skills truly were. Within the confines of the castle she was peerless. Even though her political power was still limited, she knew the law and the court protocol better than anyone, and she occupied a constant position at her father's right hand. As a member of the royal family, it was her obligation to marry, and the social demands on her time to entertain potential suitors and their backers were an unwelcome distraction from what she saw as her real duty, the efficient administration of her kingdom.

That a princess of Hyrule had to seek favor from potential marriage partners was shameful. The land had once been known far and wide for its wealth and prosperity, but that was more than a hundred years ago. Since the Triforce split, the kingdom had fallen into a slow decline, and any acknowledgment of the magical forces that once sustained the tribes of Hyrule had become taboo. Although the justifications for the prohibition of magic were nebulous, it was common knowledge that spellwork was only practiced by the Gerudo outlaws clinging to a hard and bitter life on the fringes of the desert to the west.

"This is all your fault, you know," Zelda grumbled, just loud enough so that Ganondorf could hear her.

"It's my fault that you can't cast a simple spell? Hardly," Ganondorf scoffed in response.

"You have the Triforce of Power, don't you? Without the full Triforce, Hyrule is nothing like what it once was. You probably won't even recognize it when we cross over the border." Zelda frowned as she continued. "I've seen paintings of what Castle Town used to look like back when it was still thriving, and it was a completely different place. As things stand, entire wings of the castle have been closed off because we can't afford to keep them staffed or maintained. Ordona Province has suffered from such severe depopulation that it's almost uninhabited, the Gorons have retreated into the mountains, and the only reports of the Gerudo that come to us are when someone is attacked by bandits."

"Tell me about the Gerudo," Ganondorf interrupted in a sharp voice. "How do they fare?"

"Like I said, we don't know," Zelda answered, looking away as she kicked a twig into the campfire. "About a hundred years ago, we almost went to war with them, and relations between Hyrule and the Gerudo broke down shortly thereafter. If you're the actual Ganondorf Dragmire, you should know all about it. Some diplomat you turned out to be," she couldn't help adding.

Ganondorf stood up and tossed his cloak out behind him. "If you're blaming me for the downfall of your country, you'd best be more specific in your accusations. I have no patience for inane hearsay, Princess." He hissed the last word like a curse as he towered over her, his golden eyes glowing in the light of the fire.

Zelda felt a stab of fear as she looked up into his face, seeing for the first time something far more terrifying than the horrific boar whose form he had taken. She realized that it had been foolish for her to lower her guard, and that this person was just as dangerous as a man as he had been as a monster. Were it not for the silver collar circling his throat, she would have drawn her sword on him without hesitation.

Regardless, Zelda refused to flinch at his show of aggression. "You conspired against the royal family to take possession of the Triforce," she told him, doing her best to keep her voice calm and level. "It was an act of high treason, an attempt to seize the throne for yourself. You would stop at nothing to bring your plans to fruition, even stooping so low as to threaten the young princess. A child though she may have been, she saw the evil intentions behind your actions, and the six sages of Hyrule's temples united behind her to banish you to the Dark Realm, where you would be sealed away and out of reach of the power you craved. So it has been written – do you dispute these facts?"

Ganondorf's face twisted into a sardonic smile, and he chuckled bitterly as he shook his head. "That doesn't even make sense," he said. "If I was imprisoned before I could claim the Triforce, how can I also be charged with the offense of shattering it with the touch of my impure Gerudo hands?" He clenched his right fist, and the Triforce mark gleamed on his skin.

"And why would I settle for the throne of your insignificant backwater kingdom," he continued, "when I could use the power of the Triforce to achieve anything my heart desired? To think that you are the bearer of Wisdom and cannot see the contradictions in your story, even when they stand right in front of your eyes. Are all Hylians so stupid, or just the inbred royals?"

Zelda ignored the insult and considered his words. She had to admit that his argument was valid. Since hearing about the disturbances in Holodrum and Labrynna, she had repeatedly gone over the accounts of the fabled Demon King in her mind, desperately trying to piece together facts from the disparate legends. Accurate records had not been kept at the time of Ganondorf's imprisonment, and there was no one still alive who could provide a firsthand account of the events. The Princess Zelda of that era had married young and died in childbirth before passing down her legacy, so not even the royal family knew the truth of what had happened. All that remained were vague and shadowy fables that conflated the callous and arrogant wizard thief from the desert with the hideous monstrosity Ganon, the mythical devourer of the land and bringer of war and despair.

She looked at the young man standing beside her, the handsome features of his face marred by his scowl. Although he had fought Link with an inhuman degree of strength and ferocity, once he had been defeated and tamed by the silver bridle he had shown no proclivity toward violence, either as a boar or as a man. His words were cultured, and his mind was unclouded by insanity.

"You have lived through a history that has only come down to me in songs and legends," she admitted to him. "You may be lying, but your testimony surely can't be any more occluded than the records kept by my ancestors. My kingdom is in its last days, Ganondorf, and if my fears are correct it will soon become nothing more than a puppet to its neighbors, either through armed conflict or..." She exhaled. "Or through marriage, which seems far more likely at this point, since no one respects us enough to meet us on the field of battle. The lives of the recent generations of my family have been short, and our memory is even more limited than our days in the sun. As soon as I suspected that the missing piece of the Triforce had reemerged, I left the castle without thinking, and I wasn't prepared for what I found."

"That's patently obvious," Ganondorf muttered.

"I'm going to brew some tea. Why don't you sit down with me and explain what happened to you? In a few hours we'll be back in Hyrule, and I'm not thrilled about my homecoming. We can talk more on the road, but before then I want to hear your side of the story."

He crossed his arms and glared down at her. "The less you know about me, the more difficult it will be for you to use me. Why should I trust you?"

Zelda felt like laughing, that this strange and powerful man would feel that he had cause to distrust her. She learned everything she knew from books and could barely manage a simple healing spell. The knight who bore the Triforce of Courage had barely any connection to her at all, and as soon as they finished their business in Labrynna he had all but fled from her presence, saying that he intended to set out onto the sea. The silver bridle she had used to pacify the demon boar was merely an artifact she read about in a dusty corner of the archives and uncovered in a forgotten chest within the treasury, and no one had been more surprised than her when its magic proved true. Even with the Triforce of Wisdom, she felt utterly lost and alone.

"Ganondorf, please," she sighed. "You have nothing to lose by trusting me."

His shoulders slumped as his face fell. He looked as tired as she felt.

"Fine," he said, massaging his temple with his fingertips. "I took the liberty of filling the kettle while you were washing your face last night. It's sitting by the iron pole next to your pack. Give me a few moments. I expect you to have the tea ready by the time I get back. Don't steep it too long." With this pronouncement, he turned his back on her and disappeared into the misty underbrush.

 _Nothing I do will ever be good enough_ , Zelda thought, clenching her teeth as the familiar refrain echoed through her mind. She had set off on this journey with the grand intention of returning the lost piece of the Triforce to Hyrule, and now she was being instructed on how to brew tea. As the water heated in the kettle pitched over the fire, Zelda set out two tin cups. She had brought along a pair, intending the second to be for Link. Unfortunately for her, he had departed for lands unknown, taking the Triforce of Courage with him. What a fine mess she had gotten herself into.

Zelda shook her head to brush away her thoughts before removing the kettle from its perch and pouring tea into the two cups. Steam spilled from their rims, and Ganondorf returned as she watched it twist upwards into the cold air. His feet fell softly on the pine needles of the forest floor, and she wouldn't have heard his arrival if she hadn't been listening closely.

"I thought about it," he began without preamble as he sat down next to her, "but I'm not sure what to say. What happened to me? I can't explain. Why did I take the form of a demon boar? I don't know."

"Why don't you start from where you can remember?" Zelda suggested, offering him one of the cups, which she wrapped in a ribbon of cloth to shield his skin from the heat. He took it, careful not to touch her fingers.

Ganondorf blew across the rim, sending a plume of steam outwards as if he were breathing smoke. "What I can remember," he said, "is that we were a prosperous people, despite the harsh climate of our homeland and the unwillingness of Hyrule to treat us as anything more than a savage tribe of thieves. Because none of you ever sent diplomats to us, you did not know how wealthy our capital was. In the center of this city I lived in a proud fortress rising in the shade of the northern mountains, the warm glow of the golden sand shielding us from the frigid winds that came down from the cliffs. The creatures of the desert helped us grow strong, and the ruins under the wastes helped us grow rich. Our land, meager though it was, provided for us, and for our luxuries we took advantage of the caravans that depended on us for safe passage. In many ways we were far more comfortable than you in Hyrule, who wasted your labor just as you wasted your resources. The Gerudo pitied you then, and wherever my sisters are I can assure you they pity you now."

Zelda nodded, seeing the lavish illustrations printed in the old books about the Gerudo just as clearly in her mind's eye as if they were laid out on pages sitting in her lap. "It's true that your tribe did historically oversee a great deal of the trade that found its way into Hyrule," she admitted. "I've had occasion to wonder if they don't simply avoid our kingdom now, having focused their attention on more profitable ventures."

"Whatever the case may be," Ganondorf continued, "I had no desire to go to your damp and mildew-infested kingdom, where women were traded like livestock while men played asinine games with words. Children orphaned by the king's recent war starved on the streets of Castle Town, and even the horses in the royal stables were sickly and malnourished, rubbing their bony shanks raw against the rotting walls of their narrow stables. You say that your kingdom is in a sorry state now, but I despaired for the state of Hyrule since I first set foot across the border. It is a land filled with magic, but at some point its energies became warped and strange, forced into unnatural channels and blocked by artificial barriers. The guardians of your magic had grown lax in their duties, and your temples lay empty and in ruins. It doesn't surprise me that your magic is clumsy and ineffective, because its use had been forbidden after the civil war. It was one of the first things I learned when I began to study your language – never to speak of magic."

Ganondorf took a sip of tea, and then another, apparently finding it brewed to his satisfaction. "Imagine my surprise," he continued, "when I learned that there was a magical artifact in Hyrule imbued with a source of energy far exceeding anything that should reasonably exist in this world – a golden power that would grant the deepest wish of anyone who touched it. At first I thought that it couldn't possibly be real, that it was nothing more than a myth your kingdom used to establish its legitimacy. I pursued it as nothing more than a hobby..."

He paused to take another sip of tea.

"A hobby?" Zelda asked, incredulous. "You went after the Triforce, the manifest symbol of the covenant between my people and the Goddesses, for... fun?"

Ganondorf shrugged. "I didn't 'go after' it. I was bored. The woman who should have served as the diplomat to your kingdom, my cousin – "

"Nabooru, right?" Zelda interrupted. For some reason, the name had wedged itself into her mind.

"Yes, Nabooru." Ganondorf nodded. "Nabooru loved your culture, and she had a knack for playing the foolish political games instigated by members of your court. It was all petty and meaningless nonsense to me, so I began skipping meetings to spend more time in the castle library. My trouble began when you started to follow along behind me."

"Excuse me?"

"My apologies, I mean your... ancestor." Ganondorf took a sip of tea. "It's just that you resemble her so closely, the way you frown, the way you furrow your eyebrows, the way you do this thing with your fingers when you're agitated." He rubbed the nails of the thumb and middle finger of his right hand together, demonstrating the gesture. "And you have her same way of speaking. When I lost myself in the body of the boar, it was your voice that made me remember who I was. It was like I was at the bottom of a well, and your voice was the rope I climbed as my mind cleared."

"I see," Zelda murmured. She felt herself blushing, and she looked away.

Ganondorf did not seem to notice her discomfort but continued his story, apparently impatient to reach its conclusion.

"The memory is hateful to me now, but I valued the princess's company at first, even though she had scarcely entered her second decade of life. She would read the volumes I took from the shelves, and she would leave books placed on the library tables where she knew I would find them, bookmarked in places she thought I would find interesting. It was an odd conversation we had, and I imagine that she was just as much in need of a distraction as I was. She was a clever girl, but because of her youth I did not think to fear or distrust her, and she led me to the Triforce almost as forcefully as if she had placed shackles around my hands and dragged me where she wanted me to go."

"Even now that I better understand the nature of her actions, I still can't imagine what her purpose might have been. Perhaps she found herself looking at Hyrule through my eyes, and perhaps she was forced to see its degradation as clearly as I did. It may be that she sought to possess the Triforce for much the same reasons as you do. Whatever her intentions, it embarrasses me to say that this tiny slip of a girl manipulated me as easily as she might move a chess piece across a board. Shortly after I located the entrance to the Sacred Realm I was arrested and imprisoned by the king. I had never been a favorite of the court, and there was no resistance or reprisal against the accusation of treason. War was declared on the Gerudo, and Nabooru could do nothing to prevent it. It was only when I stood to be executed that the Triforce of Power came to me, and the rest is nothing more than a blur. What happened between then and now, I can't say. Images sometimes rise in my mind, but they are nothing more than brief flashes of violence and pain."

Ganondorf rubbed the silver collar around his neck. "I know that they put this on me then. I can't say I was innocent, but neither was I guilty, and the indignity of my enslavement drove me out of my mind. How wretched it is to still feel the poison touch of the damned thing on my skin. A hundred years may have passed, but nothing has changed."

The sun had finally begun to rise, and the dawn light illuminated Ganondorf's face. Zelda could see that he was even younger than she had first thought, and she felt a sudden clarity spill over her heart like a bucket of water tossed onto a dirty floor.

"If I were to take the collar off," she said, "what would you do?"

He tossed the dregs of his tea into the dying embers of the fire, extinguishing the last of the flames. "I don't know," he responded. "To me, this has all happened within the span of a few days. I have no desire to go with you to your castle, and even if I were to return to my tribe I'm not certain I would be welcomed. You're the only link I have to my own era, a facsimile of the princess I once knew. Even without this collar, my fate is already entwined with yours."

Zelda smiled. Although she could not explain why, his words warmed her heart. Without hesitation, she reached through the space between them and touched the silver band around his throat.

"I release you," she intoned, and the collar dropped from his body and fell to the ground as softly as a sigh.

Before Zelda could draw away, Ganondorf caught her hand in his and pulled it to his lips, kissing her knuckles.

"Thank you," he whispered, his eyes burning into hers.

Zelda shifted her weight in embarrassment, knocking her cup of tea onto the ground in the process.

"Oh, goodness," she stammered, withdrawing her hand and bending to retrieve the fallen cup as anxiety over the magnitude of what she had done flooded into her mind. "Wow, I've really, this isn't what I thought would happen, I..." Her words trailed off as she caught herself rambling.

"You mentioned we still have a few hours before we cross over into Hyrule," Ganondorf said as he stretched his arms out in front of him. "We can plan our next course of action on the way, as you suggested."

"You'll come with me, then?" Zelda asked, meeting his eyes.

Ganondorf nodded. "I'll stay with you until we return to the old roads, but there is much to discuss before we reach that point," he said as he rose to his feet. "We have a long path ahead of us. Shall we get started?"

He extended his arm to help her stand. She smiled and took his hand.


End file.
